Saturday, October 30, 2010

"There has been another deluge of information released on Wikileaks - this time about the war in Iraq. But many of the resulting stories have focused on Julian Assange's character as much as on the contents of the leaked documents. Has the media missed the mark or has the Wikileaks front man become a liability for the organisation? The Listening Post this week looks at how the media has become more interested in the life of one man than the deaths of 109,000 Iraqis."

"Hezbollah has called for a boycott of the UN investigation into the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the late Lebanese prime minister, in 2005. Reports now suggest that some Hezbollah members could be indicted. The Lebanese government has co-operated with the tribunal since it was established but Hezbollah considers the assassination to be an internal matter and has called for a local investigation. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, believes information from the probe is being passed on to the group's arch rival - Israel. So, has Hezbollah moved on to the offensive? And what role could regional powers play in escalating or defusing rising tensions in Lebanon?"

"A hundred year old church was burned Friday by right-wing Israeli settlers, who broke a number of windows of the church and hurled Molotov cocktails inside.

The damage to the church was substantial, with burn damage throughout the first floor of the building.

The church was built in Jerusalem in 1897, and housed the Palestinian Bible College until 1947, when parishioners were pushed out by Jewish armed gangs during the violence accompanying the creation of the state of Israel...."

"Peace activists around the world are celebrating Friday's announcement that the Illinois-based company, Caterpillar, has decided to hold off shipment of dozens of armored bulldozers to the Israeli military while a trial about the killing of Rachel Corrie is ongoing in Israel.

Corrie was run down by a Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer in 2003 while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian doctor's home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Her parents launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against Caterpillar Corporation in the US for their role in her death. Now, they are pursuing a lawsuit in Israel against the Israeli military and the soldiers involved in her death......"

A national frenzy has seized America. Fierce debate and name-calling has raged about job losses, the nation’s growing $12 trillion debt, mandatory health care, socialism – and even witchcraft. Sarah Palin, the patron saint of low IQ Americans, has hovered over this sordid contest like an evil Halloween wraith.

If we believe polls, the Democrats look like toast. President Barack Obama may be ready to join the ranks of the unemployed....

Right-wing Republicans will press for more war, in more places – financed, of course, by the magic of credit. Few stop to think that this manic borrowing it wrecking America."

"Though the administration has declined to raise the terror alert level, the very public nature of the Yemen bomb plot is seen as giving President Obama and incumbent Congressional Democrats a much-needed political shot in the arm, conveniently enough just days before the midterm elections.

"....The moment the Iranian President sat down, he turned to Saad and said: "Let's skip the lunch. Let's have sandwiches and go to southern Lebanon together."

Now here was a problem. Saad is a Sunni Muslim; Mahmoud, of course, is a Shia, and the Iranian President was inviting a Sunni Prime Minister of Lebanon to visit the Shia south of Lebanon where he (Mahmoud, that is) would declare that southern Lebanon – he was speaking less than two miles from the Israeli border – was Iran's "front line" against Israel. Saad politely declined the invitation and Mahmoud went on to Bint Jbeil to rally his lads and lassies on his own.....

Wasn't it supposed to be the Syrians who killed Hariri (or so The New York Times and the London Times would have us believe) that blew Hariri's motorcade up – along with the 21 others whose names we have all forgotten – on St Valentine's Day of 2005? Nope. Since the Syrians offered their assistance to the United States in Iraq, it's been the pesky Iranians (courtesy The New York Times and The Times of London) who, through their Hezbollah allies, have been blamed for the mass slaughter. Notice, by the way, how the Syrians and Iranians were blamed for Lockerbie and then, post-Syrian help in the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, the Libyans?......."

Some in the west struggle to believe in the existence of secular, modern Arab men who do not oppress women

Khaled Diabguardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 October 2010

".....So, what is behind this almost casual hatred and vilification? Many cite the September 11 attacks in 2001 as an important turning point. While prejudice against Arabs, and Muslims in general, certainly increased after these atrocities, the growing demonisation and the public debate it sparked also, and perhaps ironically, led to more people developing greater understanding and sympathy towards Arabs.

But history did not begin on 9/11, nor did anti-Arab prejudice. It has a long history in the west, dating back to the colonial era and even the earlier, mutual love-hate relationship between "Islam" and "Christendom". While there were some orientalists who were Arabophiles, particularly in their admiration for the "noble and honourable" Bedouin but not for the "wily and cunning" city Arab, orientalism as a whole lent a respectable academic veneer, as Edward Said so convincingly demonstrated, to crude racism.

In this view, the Arab is indistinguishable as an individual, unchanging, backward, passive, deceitful, ruled by lust and sexuality, and "in all the centuries has bought no wisdom from experience", as Gertrude Bell, who played a crucial role in creating modern-day Iraq and Jordan, once put it."

Friday, October 29, 2010

Israeli tourists visit an abandoned army post from the 1967 war in the occupied Golan Heights. (Moti Milrod/MaanImages)

On 20 and 21 October, the 86th session of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) tourism committee was held in Jerusalem. Leading up to the conference, there was conjecture on how the member countries in attendance would handle Israel's tourism policies regarding the occupied territories: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights.

The Palestine Liberation Organization called on countries to boycott the meeting, saying that it served to condone Israel's illegal annexation of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee also called on the OECD to relocate the conference.

Israel angrily condemned Friday a series of decisions by UNESCO regarding historic sites in the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem, saying they were politically biased moves, dpa reported.

The board of the UN's cultural organization, in its biannual session which ended last week, adopted five proposals initiated by Arab member states regarding sites which are considered holy to both Jews and Muslims.

[Obama has been itching to escalate in Yemen ala Pakistan and have his drones kill innocent civilians masquerading as Terrorists. This is his justification and trigger point. It does not take a conspiracy theorist to see the set up that took place here. Did the Package Originate in Yemen , Yes , did the US's Agents and KSA's Agents place them : ABSOLUTELY. It is getting old but Obama is looking more like Bush , deploying fear and false evidence to escalate the empire's "war on Terrorism"]

(CNN) -- Suspicious packages found in at least two locations abroad that were bound for the United States "apparently contain explosive material," President Barack Obama said Friday, calling the discovery "a credible threat against our country."

The packages led to increased searches of cargo planes and trucks in several U.S. cities, said law enforcement sources with detailed knowledge of the investigation.

U.S. officials believe that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, commonly referred to as AQAP, is behind the incident.

Obama confirmed that the packages originated in Yemen, the stronghold of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

"Lots of people have weighed in to condemn the planned execution of Tariq Aziz [1], the former Iraqi official who was condemned to death this week, including the Vatican, Russia, and Amnesty International. Let me add my voice to theirs.

The hanging judge [2]in this particular kangaroo court is a former aide to Prime Minister Maliki, who ran for election on Maliki’s misnamed State of Law coalition. It’s clear that Maliki wants to use the execution of Tariq Aziz, a Roman Catholic, to build support for his party among the most extreme Shiite partisans. Like Maliki’s support for the pre-election shenanigans in January, when Iran and Ahmed Chalabi maneuvered to exclude hundreds of legitimate candidates from running over charges of connections to the old Baath Party, Maliki wants to wave the bloody shirt of Tariq Aziz to rally his supporters. The fact that he’s not a Muslim makes that even more popular among Shiite radicals.

Anyone who dealt with Iraq from the 1970s through 2003 knows that Tariq Aziz shouldn’t be put to death for crimes committed during the Saddam Hussein era. As a civilian official, he was often a moderating voice within Iraqi councils, including during the first Gulf War in 1990-91, and he certainly wasn’t responsible for internal repression by the secret police. The biggest irony in the whole affair is that the very people who’ve condemned him to death, led by functionaries of the secretive, Islamic fundamentalist Dawa party led by Prime Minister Maliki, are themselves responsible for atrocities at least on the scale of the repression visited on the Shiites and Kurds in the old Iraq.

Since taking over in Baghdad in 2003, the Shiite majority has been responsible for tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths, carried out by Shiite death squads under the command of the Badr Corps, the militia of the former Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Sadrist Mahdi Army, now allied to Maliki’s political bloc, and by Dawa fanatics, too, who helped run infamous prisons in Iraq where many innocent Sunnis were tortured or killed. It should be noted that in 1980, soon after becoming Iraq’s deputy prime minister, assassins from Dawa, backed by Iran, threw a grenade that almost killed Aziz and did kill a number of others. At the time, the new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran was bent on expanding its power by toppling the government of Iraq, and Dawa—which had been responsible for other terrorist acts in Iraq, too, over the years—helped raise tensions that provoked the eight-year Iran-Iraq was that began in September 1980.

A spokesman for the Vatican, Federico Lombardi, said, “We really want the sentence against Tariq Aziz not to be carried out.” Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, warned [3]that killing Aziz “will only worsen the situation in Iraq.” Part of the reason why Iraq wants him dead, and why the United States hasn’t intervened [4]on his behalf, is that Aziz reportedly plans to spill secrets about Iraq’s diplomacy[5]over the decades that he served as foreign minister, including American contacts with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, when Washington tilted to favor Baghdad over Tehran.

Aziz, whose been in prison since 2003 after surrendering to US forces,is frail, ill, and harmless, and he's someone who has a lot of history to tell. He can appeal his sentence, and his execution can be avoided. But given Maliki's desperate scramble to hold onto his job, it's looking like Aziz will be a human sacrifice."

"The Obama administration says it is backing a strategy of reconciliation with the Taliban. But just back from Afghanistan, unembedded investigative journalists Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley say night raids by U.S. Special Operations are killing the reconciliation the administration claims to support...."

"It has 16 intelligence agencies employing a million spooks at its disposal, along with the military muscle of the entire NATO alliance. And it's been on the job for at least a decade. So why can't the US find Osama bin Laden? Maybe someone should ask Pakistan’s spy agency......"

".....Hundreds of Israeli speakers, politicians, diplomats and scholars have been circling the globe in recent months, talking about Israel’s undying commitment to peace. While this goes on, Israeli bulldozers are back in full gear, tearing down homes, businesses and olive groves. Israel continues to expand settlements and build what is rightly termed the Apartheid Wall, all with little, if any criticism from the US, the self-declared honest peace broker. Worse, as much as the political theater is organized and financed by US dollars, the full-scale destruction taking place in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is also courtesy of US coffers. Such is the self-defeating policy of the United States. Such is the peace process."

"Israeli police injured two Arab legislators yesterday in violent clashes provoked by Jewish rightwing extremists staging a march through the northern Arab town of Umm al-Fahm.

Haneen Zoubi, a parliament member who has become a national hate figure in Israel and received hundreds of death threats since her participation in an aid flotilla to Gaza in the summer, was among those hurt.

Ms Zoubi reported being hit in the back and neck by rubber bullets as she fled the area when police opened fire. In an interview, she said she believed she had been specifically targeted by police snipers after they identified her....."

Yes, you can choose to do nothing. But you will be choosing to let yourself and your family and your country be ripped off

By Johann HariThe Independent

"There is a ripple of rage spreading across Britain. It is clearer every day that the people of this country have been colossally scammed. The bankers who crashed the economy are richer and fatter than ever, on our cash. The Prime Minister who promised us before the election “we’re not talking about swingeing cuts” just imposed the worst cuts since the 1920s, condemning another million people to the dole queue. Yet the rage is matched by a flailing sense of impotence. We are furious, but we feel there is nothing we can do. There’s a mood that we have been stitched up by forces more powerful and devious than us, and all we can do is sit back and be shafted.

This mood is wrong. It doesn’t have to be this way – if enough of us act to stop it. To explain how, I want to start with a small scandal, a small response – and a big lesson from history....."

The US president has caved into vested interests and preserved extraordinary rendition. Not so different to his predecessor, then

Tariq Aliguardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010

"....In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power, unless they do something that makes a change. Obama has not done so. Instead, both at home and abroad, the continuities between Obama's administration and that of Bush-Cheney far outweigh any differences.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

[One thing Nasrallah is not is naive , but I fully don't understand the reaction of the Party to the tribunal. He calls on "All Lebanese" but everyone who knows anything about Lebanon is that "All Lebanese" are divided up in this matter on sectarian lines. He can preach all he wants to the Sunnis and Christians but that will not change their attitude or view of either the tribunal or the Resistance. His over reaction could also points to an implicit guilt !! If the party did not do it (and there is not enough evidence to indict anyone and the witnesses have been proven to be lying) they should not be so reactionary towards the tribunal. The Tribunal is politicized and is acting as a tool of the US/Israel/KSA to be used against the resistance, most rational people believe so. But most people in Lebanon are not thinking rationally and think along sectarian lines, and he FAILED to gain the support of Lebanon the moment he took over Beirut 2 years ago , and for him to try to convince the non Shia Lebanese that he is speaking on behalf of All Lebanon is both inaccurate and insincere. He should stop acting like he is guilty , stop being defensive. Because all he is doing now is adding fuel to the fire]

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Hezbollah movement, has urged all Lebanese to boycott a UN-backed investigation into the murder of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister.

In a televised address on Thursday, he warned that the country had reached "a very dangerous point".

"I call on all Lebanese, citizens and politicians alike, to boycott this tribunal and end all co-operation with its investigators.

"Any further co-operation with the tribunal is equal to an attack on the resistance," Nasrallah said, referring to his predominatly Shia Muslim movement.

Omar Salem Shehab tells of torture at hands of notorious Iraqi police unit and says US forces were involved in his capture

AN IMPORTANT PIECE

Martin Chulov in Baghdadguardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 October 2010

"During the foreboding months of 2005, one police unit struck more fear into Iraqis than the entire occupying US army. They were known as the Wolf Brigade.

Brutal even by Iraqi standards, their soldiers and officers seemingly answered to no one. They were seen as indiscriminate and predatory. The unit's reputation had been known Iraq-wide and results of their numerous raids are still bogged down in Iraq's legal system.But the full range of their abuses and close co-operation with the US army remained in the shadows until the WikiLeaks disclosures showcased them in stark detail.....

"We were at home that night," Shehab recalled this week. "We were three brothers sleeping above my ice-cream shop. We were woken by soldiers entering our house by force. They came with Americans. They said we were wanted and produced a document. The Americans took our pictures, then the soldiers we now knew were the Wolf Brigade took us to the Seventh Division camp [of the Iraqi army]."......

"We were tortured all the time, he said. "We were never investigated, just tortured. The commander of the Wolf Brigade, Abu al-Walid was one of the torturers. My brother had a kidney problem and they continued to torture him without giving him medicine. "He died after a month and the doctor wrote 'kidney failure' as a cause of death, despite his body being covered with torture marks. ......

Torture and death seemed synonymous with the almost exclusively Shia unit, which was tasked with rooting out Sunni insurgents from post-Saddam Iraq. As security unravelled across the country, they were often seen alongside US forces, particularly in Baghdad and Mosul.......

"They arrested us all," he said. "There was an Iranian officer, his name was Ali. Many other officers with him were proud to tell us that they were not police, but Wolf Brigade. They said they had come from Baghdad to arrest us because we supported Saddam and deserved to be executed.

"One officer threatened to rape my wife. He tore at her dress and four of my colleagues were killed in front of my eyes. They drilled holes in my legs and arms and did all manner of things to me. They took me and around 1,500 other prisoners to a basement inside the police commander's headquarters."

The unit stayed in Mosul for five months. Ahmed remained in prison for eight months, before being released by a court without conviction........

The Wolf Brigade unit was formed in late 2004, drawing many recruits from the impoverished Shia slums of Sadr city. By late 2005, it was around 2,000-strong and roaming the country with impunity. The unit notionally answered to the then interior minister, Ibrahim al-Jafari, who became prime minister in April 2005 for 12 months as sectarian carnage spiralled out of control.......

Questions have endured in the ensuing five years about the extent of US co-operation with the unit and whether US forces knew of the scale of their abuses.

"The Americans were there," said Shehab. "They weren't just witnesses. They were part of the operation against us.""

".....Earlier this month, Feltman sent a message to Hezbollah to the effect that if Hezbollah will go along with blaming Mughniyah for killing Hariri that works for the Americansbecause it will be circumstantial evidence that he also did acts of terrorism in the 1980’s so all files could be closed once and for all. He told more than one person he met with in Beirut this month that he thought his was “a really great plan.”

"Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, Haneen Zoabi, stated that she was hit by two rubber-coated bullets fired by the Israeli police during Wednesday clashes in Umm al-Fahm, after the police violently attacked protesters who took off to the streets to counter a march by fundamentalist settlers....."

"Ismail Haniyeh, Prime Minister of the dissolved government in Gaza, stated that it is important to hold talks and dialogue sessions with western governments so that the governments can know the stances of his government in Gaza directly instead of just hearing about them...."

"The U.S. news media is framing the debate about the WikiLeaks revelations of the Iraq War's savagery as a story about the alleged misconduct of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, in an attempt to destroy the message by discrediting the messenger, says former CIA analyst Ray McGovern...."

"Some have expressed hopes that the tea partiers, many of whom grew out of the Ron Paul movement, will bring about a shift away from American imperialism through their demands for smaller, cheaper, less intrusive, and more accountable government. But it ain’t necessarily so. The tea partiers generally fail to understand that the indispensable element in the explosive growth of big government over the past ten years has been Washington’s failure to craft a foreign and security policy that is commensurate with the nation’s resources and proportional to the actual level of threat that exists in the world. This results in the tea partiers overwhelmingly supporting an aggressive security policy even though they must know that leaving the Pentagon budget untouched and untouchable guarantees deficit spending and continued growth of the parts of government that are allegedly committed to “keeping us free.”....."

"...Cash has always been the currency of the East. So it's hardly a surprise that Iran was found bringing bags of it to President Karzai's office in Afghanistan, nor that the world's best-dressed leader should admit it with a smile when caught out.

What is a little more confusing is the contortion with which the US government has reacted to the news. Since, as Karzai cheerfully revealed, Washington pays him in precisely the same manner [equal opportunity whore??], the State Department is hardly in a position to denounce Tehran's act. On the other hand, it is terribly anxious to demonise the country and paint it as a supporter of terror throughout the region and to keep it from having any influence in Afghanistan. Just as in Iraq one might add....

So they may have. They were also aiding and abetting with cash the forces of Moqtada al Sadr, al-Maliki and anyone else they thought was useful....

With its two greatest regional enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, overthrown, Tehran could have hardly been more delighted and it rushed to offer convenient views, and co-operation with Washington to sort out the aftermath. It was an offer meant to limit US involvement as much as aid it, but it could have been built on to lock Tehran into the post-war reconstruction of the two countries. Instead it was flatly rejected...."

"Riot police protecting 30 far-right Israeli extremists who marched in the country's largest Arab town yesterday chanting "death to terrorists" used a barrage of tear gas and stun grenades to disperse protesting residents.

Ten arrests were made during clashes between stone-throwing Israeli Arab youths and riot police after the arrival of the marchers, who were led by two of the country's most extreme right-wing activists, Hebron settlers Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben Gvir.....

Meir Kahane was an American-Israeli Orthodox rabbi, ultra-nationalist and politician. A passionate activist for Jewish causes in New York, he emigrated to Israel in 1971. Soon after his arrival, he established the militantly anti-Arab Kach party, declaring that all Arabs should be deported. He led Kach to parliament in 1984 before it was eventually banned as racist; his most famous work, They Must Go, has been likened to Mein Kampf....."

Today's war is at roughly the point where Gorbachev was in late 1985 – except that the generals in the field are united in still hoping for military victory. Obama's top commander, David Petraeus, has not given up on his surge, and if he decides to overrule his top brass the US president is in a harder political position than Gorbachev was in the Soviet Union's undemocratic system. The international context is also worse, given that Pakistan and Iran take opposite sides today.

As for the "new" Russia's position on Afghanistan, the irony is that Moscow is less willing to see a US withdrawal than Obama appears to be. Medvedev and Putin will not send their own troops, but they firmly want the Americans to stay."

Archbishop emeritus tells Cape Town Opera that the treatment of Palestinians is like South Africa under apartheid

David Smith in Johannesburgguardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 October 2010

"Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu has urged a South African opera company to boycott Israel, comparing its treatment of Palestinians to his own country's era of racial apartheid. The Nobel peace prize laureate said that it would be "unconscionable" for Cape Town Opera to perform in Israel while millions of people living there are denied access to culture and education...."

"Clashes broke out after extreme right-wing Jewish protesters marched through the outskirts of Umm Al-Fahm in Israel. The march commemorated the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York. Hundreds of Israeli Arabs began throwing stones and police, who had been supervising the march, responded with tear gas, stun grenades and arrests."

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

There have been noble attempts by civil society groups, in and outside the US, to boycott the US. However, such boycotts have never truly been consolidated nor have their positions been coherently articulated. More important, the power of the US, the nature of its political system and internal social fabric, and its control of the world through numerous military bases that, on a map, look like a science fiction alien takeover of Earth, demands other strategic and pragmatic considerations. To think of strategies for ending Israeli apartheid and occupation in the same way as US occupation and imperialism is to have a naive understanding of the dynamics of power in both contexts.Nevertheless, because of the special relationship between Israel and the US, one can think of the boycott of Israel as a way to boycott a US satellite in the Middle East. By changing the nature of the regime in Israel, ending the occupation and recognizing and promoting the Palestinian right of return, this could begin to reverse US policy elsewhere in the world by exposing the failed policies of the US government. In other words, the special US-Israeli relationship means that the boycott of Israel has the potential to significantly impact US policy elsewhere and shift the balance of power in the region.

"In Gaza, 40,000 students have been unable to start school this year because there are not enough buildings to accomodate them.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency says the Palestinian territory needs at least 100 new schools but there is simply not enough construction material available because of Israel's blockade of the territory.

"Maliki and his Shi'ite Da'wa party had a score to settle with Aziz, and they will believe justice has now been done. Everyone else loses badly because Aziz is arguably the only person on Earth who could tell the real story, bit by juicy bit, about the rolling, decades-long American dirty game in Iraq....

History may judge that Bush and Blair - with their Moloch-style terrorizing machine dubbed "shock and awe" - have been no better than Saddam's inner circle; directly and indirectly, their "policies" killed more Iraqi civilians than Saddam ever did. Yet they did (Blair) and they will (Bush) publish books extolling their "glory".

Aziz instead is the only one left with a real breathtaking story to tell. And as the proverbial man who knows too much, he had to be taken out."

"The judges at Nuremberg after World War II had a much deeper understanding of the horrors of war than the neocon editors at the Washington Post do. Assessing the barbarity unleashed by the Nazis, the Nuremberg Tribunal identified “war of aggression” as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

What those judges meant was that every evil that comes with war – the slaughter of civilians, the brutality faced by soldiers, the depredations of hunger and disease, the destruction of homes and businesses, the temptation to torture, and all other war crimes – can all be traced back to the original crime of invasion.

Yet, the Post’s editors, who aided and abetted President George W. Bush in building public support for his war of aggression against Iraq, have never been willing to stand up and take full responsibility for those deceptive editorials that parroted Bush’s WMD lies and contributed to the bloodbath that followed.

Instead, the Post editors have continued to cavil and quibble. On Tuesday, the Post attacked WikiLeaks for its latest release of secret U.S. military field reports from Iraq...."

"The White House and the Pentagon have failed to confront and contain the threat to national security posed by WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange who should be arrested as an "enemy combatant", voices on the US conservative right insisted yesterday.

Frustration with the failure of President Barack Obama to combat WikiLeaks has grown since the release of almost 400,000 secret documents that exposed the extent of abuse of prisoners in Iraq by US and Iraqi personnel......"

"LONDON – Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said it was "impossible" for coalition forces to secure victory in Afghanistan in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.

Gorbachev, who was in charge when Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 after a war lasting nearly a decade, added that the alternative to pulling out troops was "another Vietnam" which "wouldn't work."....

"It will be more difficult for America to get out of this situation. But what's the alternative? Another Vietnam? Sending in half a million troops? That wouldn't work," Gorbachev added......"

There is no security risk in revealing the scale of torture and killing. Far more damage was done by trying to suppress it

Daniel Ellsbergguardian.co.uk, Monday 25 October 2010

"Nearly 40 years ago I leaked the Pentagon papers – a top secret 7,000-page study of US decision-making during the Vietnam war which revealed repeated lies and cover-ups by the administration. The Iraq war logs, published this weekend by Wikileaks, could be even more significant.

As with Vietnam, we have again seen evidence of a massive cover-up over a number of years by the American authorities. The logs reveal the human consequences of the continuing Iraq war, which have been concealed from the western public for too long: the countless instances of torture; the killing of hundreds of civilians at roadside checkpoints....

In the coming months I hope the courage and patriotism shown by the sources of these records – who risk long prison sentences – will be emulated by those with access to higher level documents. We need to see White House, Pentagon and CIA papers that reveal evidence of war crimes by top-level policy-makers – to bring the criminal activity that's happening right now into the conscience of the American people.

The possibility of uncovering this is worth the great personal risk by whoever the sources may be – just as I never doubted that it was worth risking my own freedom to reveal the Pentagon Papers four decades ago."

A formal deal with Russia was always likely to be explored by the Western military alliance

Leading ArticleThe Independent

"The Great Game reasserts itself. Dmitry Medvedev will attend Nato's summit in Lisbon next month, where the Russian President is expected to provide help for the Western military alliance's faltering mission in Afghanistan.

There is little prospect of Russia sending troops to the country, but this is, nevertheless, a remarkable turn of events. Two decades after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan, after a disastrous 10-year occupation which left 15,000 Russian troops dead, Moscow is coming back.....

The plan does not come from out of the blue. Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, outlined a potential deal last month, in which Russia would help to stabilise Afghanistan. And Moscow already permits the transit of certain supplies across Russian territory. An agreement is also in place allowing Nato planes to pass through Russian airspace. With Nato's land supply routes through Pakistan under increasing pressure, the logic has long been closer co-operation with Moscow.

A formal deal with Russia was always likely to be explored. For Nato, this partnership with the old enemy makes sense....."

Nato officials explore joint initiatives ahead of landmark alliance summit, which is to include President Medvedev

Simon Tisdall in Brusselsguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010

"Russia's military could be drawn back into the Afghanistan theatre for the first time since the Red Army was forcibly expelled by US-backed mujahideen fighters in 1989 under plans being discussed by Nato officials. The proposals precede a landmark alliance summit next month, to be attended by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.

The officials said several joint Nato-Russian initiatives on Afghanistan were on the table......"

"....Or, I could describe the humiliating and condescending way in which the panelists spoke to the Arab-Israeli passengers who came to testify (compared to the respect they showed whilst interviewing Opposition leader Tzipi Livni and military chief Gabi Ashkenazi).

I could even explain how for 45 minutes I watched the panelists argue with the Arab passenger about how being that "he seemed like a reasonable man" he could breach Israeli law (as an Israeli citizen) and decide to get on a ship to Gaza. Indeed – a Palestinian going to a Palestinian territory seemed more absurd to these judges than the actual policy that stops him getting there (and by extension anyone getting out).

Every step of the way it was obvious that this commission, which was tasked with determining whether Israel is in breach of international law in blockading Gaza, had made up their minds long before they stepped into the Rabin Guest House.

But put all that aside, here are five simple reasons why this Commission is a sham....."

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

WASHINGTON - October 26 - The recent Wikileaks release--The Iraq War Logs--has shed important light on the high rate of civilian death and widespread atrocities, including torture, that are endemic to the war in Iraq. As veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are outraged that the U.S. government sought to hide this information from the U.S. public, instead presenting a sanitized and deceptive version of war, and we think it is vital for this and further information to get out. Members of IVAW have experienced firsthand the realities of war on the ground, and since our inception we have spoken out about similar atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are asking the U.S. public to join us in calling on our government to end the occupations and bring our brothers and sisters home.

The U.S. government has been claiming for years that they do not keep count of civilian death tolls, yet the recent releases show that they do, in fact, keep count. Between 2004 and 2009, according to these newly disclosed records, at least 109,032 Iraqis died, 66,081 of whom were civilians. The Guardian reports that the Iraq War Logs show that the U.S. military and government gave de facto approval for hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape, and murder by Iraqi soldiers and police officers. These recent revelations, along with the Afghan War Diaries and Collateral Murder footage, weave a picture of wars in which the rules of engagement allow for excessive violence, woven into the fabric of daily life with the U.S. military presence acting as a destabilizing and brutalizing force. The Iraq War Logs, while crucial, are reports produced in real time and themselves may be slanted to minimize the culpability of U.S. forces. Still, they represent an important part of evidence in assessing the reality of the Iraq war, evidence that can only be improved by the further release of documents and information and corroboration by individuals involved. To this end, our members are reviewing both Wikileaks' Afghanistan War Diaries and the Iraq War Logs to identify incidents we were part of and to shed more light on what really happened.

Haaretz: Will the Academy give an Oscar to a notorious anti-Semite?Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences intends to award iconic French-Swiss filmmaker Jean Luc Godard with an honorary Oscar.

Read more---------------------Godard made a movie in the 70s called 'The Palestinians'..But really!This is becoming too laughable for words..Shame on Haaretz..

"You acted against those who came to kill you and tried to kill you," said Netanyahu. "There is no one better than you. I salute you."

He then met some of the commandos who took part in the raid, shaking their hands on a prow-shaped veranda overlooking the craggy bay at their Atlit base. They were shadowed by bodyguards and, out to sea, a squad of commandos in a speed boat.

"In Berlin, an exhibition entitled “Hitler and the Germans” has just opened. It examines the factors that caused the German people to bring Adolf Hitler to power and follow him to the very end.

I am too busy with the problems of Israeli democracy to fly to Berlin. Pity. Because since childhood, precisely this question has been troubling me. How did it happen that a civilized nation, which saw itself as the “people of poets and thinkers”, followed this man, much as the children of Hamelin followed the pied piper to their doom.

This troubles me not only as a historical phenomenon, but as a warning for the future. If this happened to the Germans, can it happen to any people? Can it happen here?..... "